Podcast May 19, 2021

Bank wires can do better. Here’s how.

When it comes to Fintechs and modernizing finance, it’s all about improving user experiences.

And few banking products need it more than the traditional bank wire.

In this episode, Chris speaks with Marwan Forzley , CEO at Veem , about how his company is fixing the user experience issues with wiring money.

The trouble with bank wires

User experience is central to any successful business out there right now.

In finance, in particular, the poor user experiences that traditional banking products have often delivered is, ultimately, driving the explosion of Fintechs over the last decade or so.

And for Veem, one of the worst offenders is the bank wire — a negative user experience the company is keen on fixing.

“We attract customers that typically use a wire transfer method with their banks, where they just don’t like the experience .” — Marwan Forzley

So, what exactly are the issues with traditional bank wires that are driving customers to look for alternatives?

For the sender

The hoops a sender has to go through to wire money to someone are often onerous — just think of everything that goes into sending money this way.

You need to gather a ton of information on the recipient — business name, address, intermediary bank account information, swift codes, currency pairs and, on top of all that, you often can’t do it online and actually have to show up in person at a branch.

It can get overwhelming. Especially when speed matters.

Add to these annoyances the costs involved with the numerous fees the sender has to pay, like wire initiation fees or currency exchange fees, the fact that there are often cutoff times, and the lack of updates once the money is sent…

Well, it’s a wonder anything ever gets sent.

For the recipient

On the other end of the transaction, the recipient arguably has it even worse.

If they want to ship something or provide a service to the customer, they’re not even sure when they are getting paid. This leads to them constantly checking their bank account to see if it went through.

And if they have multiple customers, it’s a nightmare reconciling these payments.

How Veem is fixing the user experience

With so many friction points for users, Marwan knew there was a better way. And at Veem, he’s providing it.

“We wanted to give the user a very different experience to what they have today with bank wires.” — Marwan Forzley

How?

First, the entire architecture of Veem is based on a model where the sender has to do very little to send money.

The sender provides an email; the recipient picks up the claim to get paid, authenticates themself, and provides their bank details. Then, the payment is picked up by Veem and they pay the receiver.

This can be integrated into whatever system the recipients use on the backend so that they will always know how to invoice and who paid them.

It’s much simpler — and it makes for a more delightful experience.

Why they’re partnering up to do it

In order to accomplish all of this, Veem are consciously seeking out partners to expand their own capabilities.

And this makes sense — markets like these take a combination of partners coming together to service them.

“We’re big fans of partnering because there’s no point in building everything — especially when things exist that we can leverage.” — Marwan Forzley

It’s a big world with a lot of use cases, so naturally, Veem is drawn to the potential for partners who have already conquered certain corners of it, rather than building everything from the ground up.

That way, every use case and vertical is optimized and the company runs no risk of spreading themselves — and their expertise — too thin.

To ensure that you never miss an episode of Payments Innovation, subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or here and don’t forget to check out our YouTube !

Until next time!

Listening on a desktop & can’t see the links? Just search for Payments Innovation in your favorite podcast player.

Find Your Bold

Currencycloud is here to back you as you leap boldly into the future. Get in touch with an expert today.

Get Started